[Theorycrafting] What kind of ships should we concern ourselves with?

[NKato]

Let me start by summing up what has been known from devs in chatroll and elsewhere:

1. All ship classes up to Destroyer (Corvette, Frigate, Destroyer) will likely be able to be individually owned and insured. Maybe on the insurance.

2. Persistent ship classes are Cruisers, Escort Carriers, Battlecruisers, and the Bengal Class Carrier.

3. Persistent ships are unlikely to be easy to secure for any length of time, though we do not know what the gameplay mechanics will be that determine when/how/where a ship can be challenged over ownership.

4. It is a general assumption that only organizations of certain sizes can handle running persistent ships. TEST meets that criteria at the barest minimum by my judgement. There are a multitude of factors to consider: Logistics, weapons supplying, range of the vessel, and other factors that play significantly into the operation of such a vessel.

Based on all of this, I am under the impression that if we, as an organization, are to pursue a capital ship doctrine, it would be wise to do the following in order:

1. Focus on the non-persistent caps first, develop a capital ship operations doctrine based on organizational experience in fielding those ships.

2. Put it up to a vote on whether or not we will pursue a persistent capship, and which type it will be. (Reason being, each class of persistent vessel is likely to have its own cost to operate.)

3. Pursue the acquisition of a persistent capital ship through piracy, legal means (salvaging), or other probable means such as raising reputation with the UEE. Personally, it'd be pretty badass if we could capture a Vanduul battlecruiser... :D

These are just my thoughts, but what do you guys think? Should we adopt a "low-overhead" approach to developing our capital ship capabilities, or just throw our Auroras at a Bengal and see what sticks?

 

[stefmor90]

D00d you're getting it all wrong. Aurora > all

 

[Macabre Poetry]

I think once we have a better inkling of what the logistical side of capital ship ownership looks like, I think we can determine if we want to pursue that.

I'm very excited for the logistical sides of operations. The way the devs have begun to describe the supply/demand economics indicate to me that if we can establish a successfully fast supply chain, it can be very lucrative.

Securing a good supply chain would require the ships to quickly transport items as well as ships to eliminate people that encroach on our routes.

Then we can manipulate prices.;)

 

[NKato]

I think once we have a better inkling of what the logistical side of capital ship ownership looks like, I think we can determine if we want to pursue that.

I'm very excited for the logistical sides of operations. The way the devs have begun to describe the supply/demand economics indicate to me that if we can establish a successfully fast supply chain, it can be very lucrative.

Securing a good supply chain would require the ships to quickly transport items as well as ships to eliminate people that encroach on our routes.

Then we can manipulate prices.;)

The problem with "eliminating people that encroach on our routes" means that legal traders will be collaborating with pirates. Not an invalid tactic, but an unethical one.

Personally, it's better to just overwhelm the competition with volume delivery; crowd out the contracts market so that they can't get a leg up on us.

 

[Macabre Poetry]

Haha. I did describe a cartel.

What will it take to be able to overwhelm with volume delivery? Granted, we do not know too much about the economy yet, but how will be position ourselves in a place where we can meet the demand for various locations. We're going to need some serious demand forecasting. Any econ grads here?

 

[NKato]

Demand is going to probably be based on inventory in Star Citizen. Let's say there's been a big sales week for Anvil, selling a huge stock of Hornets to various customers. They become critically low on inventory (about 5% of what they normally have in stock), and that would trigger a need for resources from other factories to supply them with the materials to produce the Hornets in order to meet demand.

Chris has specifically said that he has no plans on letting players have such fine control over the economy, so we're not going to be sales tycoons or anything like that.

 

[AntiSqueaker]

As far as larger capital ships go, don't forget that TEST is part of Reddfaction, so if we find something really big, like a Bengal, Panther (escort carrier) Battleship, etc, etc, we can have the manpower to keep it. Even if they aren't directly in TEST, they'll be blues. Having a big Reddfaction super-base (I vote for the Wrath of Snoo!) would be pretty baller.

I think having a Bengal as a massive distillery/bar would be an excellent venture. Also probably a big deterrent to potentially hostile forces from moving in, as well as a good base to mount expeditions and shit.

But I think that the most used capital ships are going to be Frigate and below, simply because you can park it somewhere and not have to worry about it. I'm personally shooting for a Retaliator being the biggest ship that I own, but I'd love to pitch in on someones capital ship.

 

[NKato]

As far as larger capital ships go, don't forget that TEST is part of Reddfaction, so if we find something really big, like a Bengal, Panther (escort carrier) Battleship, etc, etc, we can have the manpower to keep it. Even if they aren't directly in TEST, they'll be blues. Having a big Reddfaction super-base (I vote for the Wrath of Snoo!) would be pretty baller.

I think having a Bengal as a massive distillery/bar would be an excellent venture. Also probably a big deterrent to potentially hostile forces from moving in, as well as a good base to mount expeditions and shit.

But I think that the most used capital ships are going to be Frigate and below, simply because you can park it somewhere and not have to worry about it. I'm personally shooting for a Retaliator being the biggest ship that I own, but I'd love to pitch in on someones capital ship.

I already own a Retaliator. I have plans on using it quite often for scrub runs in anti-piracy missions for the UEE.

However, I am personally against the idea of using a Bengal-class for Redd Faction, because it's a big asset, and it's going to get targeted frequently. I also noticed that we don't have a lot of members in the OrangeRed classification of organizations under ReddFaction, so having UEE support (reputation-wise) is unlikely.

Here's a list of all capships I know, and their known/presumed capabilities. Ships highlighted in blue are personally-ownable vessels. Ships highlighted in orange are persistent ships, and will be owned by organizations.

Corvette - Fast, maneuverable, good for screening against fighters. Likely to be used as convoy escort. Will have very minimal hangar facilities, or none at all. Very limited in ship-to-ship combat.​

Frigate - Patrol Vessel. Not designed to take a lot of damage in major extended combat engagements. Is good for quick strikes and combat support. It is a "ship of the line" for small scale engagements.​

Destroyer - Modular combat vessel. Hangar capacity unknown (unlikely, given its preliminary designs do not show a fully functional hangar). Will be useful for fire support against large and small ships. I believe the Destroyer will be able to "fight for survival" as a matter of its design, hence its past use as a reconnaissance vessel in unknown space. (Though destroyer recon is not done solo.)​

Cruiser - A true ship of the line for most combat engagements, the Cruiser will likely carry a varied armament, and have a limited hangar capacity. It is designed around being able to take damage and dish it out all the same. It will likely be possible to rekit the Cruiser as a pure anti-fighter fire support vessel, or anti-capital fire support, or both.​

Escort Carrier - A smaller version of the Bengal, basically, but with standalone defense capacity equal to that of a Frigate or Destroyer. That means its primary deterrent will be the full squadron that it is likely capable of supporting (12 fighters at most).​

Battlecruiser - A ship dedicated to pure, unadulterated destruction. It will carry guns that can slag anything it goes up against, and have a limited hangar capacity. It is extremely unlikely that it will be able to carry a full squadron. If an organization deploys a Battlecruiser masterfully alongside a squadron or two...well, I don't even need to describe what would happen, do I?​

What a Battlecruiser does. ​

Bengal Class - The mother of all UEE ships, it can carry up to three squadrons last I checked, and is essentially a mobile base with lots of guns. However, something that big won't go unnoticed for long, and will be easy to detect even if you do manage to hide it. Pirate organizations will be a constant threat. Maintenance will be especially high-demand, with the need for regularly-scheduled (and emergency) resupply operations, in addition to repairs and upkeep. For the min-maxers, the time you have for fine-tuning the Bengal's systems will be at a premium.​

In my honest, personal opinion, having a highly mobile combat force is our best option as Redditors. That way, we don't get easily tied down to any one location or region. A Bengal-Class is anything but "highly" mobile. Everything that is equal to Escort Carrier and under, will be mobile enough to meet my expectations, but the Battlecruiser and the Bengal are simply going to be vessels that are too large.

In addition to the size/mobility issue, you've also got to account for player counts in the instancing system for the multiplayer combat. If you only deploy large ships constantly, you'll have less manpower to bring to bear in fighter combat. Here's an example.

Let's say the instance system supports 100 players maximum per instance. Mechanics have been said to allot a maximum of half of the total player count to a single faction, so by that count you can only field 50 men in a single instance. You have a fleet of a Battlecruiser, plus one cruiser and one Escort Carrier. Each of those capitals require at least 15 men to run. That means you're already investing 45 men into running a capital fleet, with room for only five more men to run fighters.

I imagine Chris Roberts intends for us to experiment with a wide range of fleet compositions, and he also doesn't want us to be fielding a cap-heavy fleet into instances, which quickly can devolve into a rock-paper-scissors issue. As a result, I think we'll be running primarily fighters with heavy vessels (Retaliators, Constellations, etc) as combat support, and capships will not be used as often as one might think.
​

Conversely, Roberts may be looking into making each capship capable of standing on its own, so that we don't need to bring in as many different capships in a fleet to cover different roles. The long and short of it is, we shouldn't concern ourselves with capital ships unless the situation calls for it, hence why I personally advocate for sticking with a primarily corvette-frigate-destroyer capfleet in ReddFaction. They are ships that are easy to replace, unlike persistent ships, and they can fill key roles as needed.

And best of all, they can still give the bigger orgs problems, even if they have a Bengal.

 

[BluChew]

collaborating with pirates. Not an invalid tactic, but an unethical one.

Honestly, attaining mass amounts of credits with minimal effort will always be unethical... "gotta' feed my space babies".

 

[Macabre Poetry]

Honestly, attaining mass amounts of credits with minimal effort will always be unethical... "gotta' feed my space babies".

I'll be your sugar daddy.

 

[BluChew]

Let's say the instance system supports 100 players maximum per instance. Mechanics have been said to allot a maximum of half of the total player count to a single faction, so by that count you can only field 50 men in a single instance. You have a fleet of a Battlecruiser, plus one cruiser and one Escort Carrier. Each of those capitals require at least 15 men to run. That means you're already investing 45 men into running a capital fleet, with room for only five more men to run fighters.

I think that's a bit optimistic considering SC will, inevitably, be a CPU/GPU hog. I doubt we'll see numbers like EvE engagements (would be EPIC), however those are great ideas! Cant wait to see some more fleet theory compositions.

 

[BluChew]

I'll be your sugar daddy.

 

[NKato]

I think that's a bit optimistic considering SC will, inevitably, be a CPU/GPU hog. I doubt we'll see numbers like EvE engagements (would be EPIC), however those are great ideas! Cant wait to see some more fleet theory compositions.

CIG themselves gave 100 people in an instance as a highly optimistic number. Personally, I think it's possible if you make it a dedicated fleet warfare instance. We have 300-man servers in ArmA 2!

 

[stefmor90]

Can you crash enough Aurora's together that it increases in size class?

 

[starkestrel]

CIG themselves gave 100 people in an instance as a highly optimistic number. Personally, I think it's possible if you make it a dedicated fleet warfare instance. We have 300-man servers in ArmA 2!

Note that 100 people in a Bengal offers different processing demands than 100 people in single-seater fighter craft. It isn't yet clear how personnel stationed on a multi-seat ship will count towards the instance limit.

 

[NKato]

Note that 100 people in a Bengal offers different processing demands than 100 people in single-seater fighter craft. It isn't yet clear how personnel stationed on a multi-seat ship will count towards the instance limit.

Good point.

 

[Barthanes]

Mixed unit tactics will always be superior in strategy/first person games. I will always be in favor of having a good dose of heavy hitters and little guys to screen for the big guys.

 

[BluChew]

Mixed unit tactics will always be superior in strategy/first person games. I will always be in favor of having a good dose of heavy hitters and little guys to screen for the big guys.

Nothing better than kitchen sink fleets.

 

[NKato]

Nothing better than kitchen sink fleets.

Agreed.

The real kitchen sink approach, though, will be weapons loadouts! If an enemy fields a homogeneous fleet doctrine (not hull-wise, but weapon and shield-wise), they become a lot more vulnerable if we know what to kit for.

 

[Barthanes]

There is only one way we need to fit our fleets.

MOAR DAKKA